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“Hot latex beds”: The strangest searches that bring readers to Ars

Why do they put bike seats so high?

Search engine traffic brings plenty of readers to Ars Technica, most looking for gadget reviews and technology writing. After looking through site logs, the top 20 incoming search terms for the first half of 2013 were largely expected:

ars technica

arstechnica

ars

iphone 5

ps4

porn

blackberry z10

raspberry pi

blackberry 10

xbox one

htc one

tablet

youtube

images

revenge porn

ars tech

ios 7

bitcoin

wii u

Pretty standard stuff. But what about the oddball requests—you know, the true outliers that are so strange they appear only a single time in our logs? Well, they're present, too, and by the tens of thousands. Here are a small selection of the stranger search terms that somehow led users to Ars in the last six months:

my downspout frozen

can you change condo bylaws if someone is not paying hoa fees to not vote

club of the month discounts

u.s. military policy on pornography

how dip i determine a neighbors wi-fi passkey

how bad does it hurt to dislocate your kneecap

can you be prosecuted by your ip address

joining air force without agreeing to the policy

why are cats so fascinated by laser pointers

west wing the american president similarities

too hot outside central air unit not cooling house

mold in brita filter

should i watch amelie dubbed or with subtitles

how to make a cheap repurposed fire pit

hot latex bed

is youth xl the same size as adult small in shirts

naked picture posted that was not distributed; how do i get it removed? no way to contact website owner

are robots taking our jobs or creating them

can apple detect my pirated music

cause of turbulence in pipe flow

why di they put bike seats so high

sore tongue after eating fresh pineapple

awesome evil names

Some of these queries are quite difficult to answer; others are surprisingly easy. Amélie should be watched dubbed, for instance, while Apple can probably see that you're a dirty pirate but is unlikely to act on that knowledge. (Update: Amélie should of course be watched subtitled. The writer responsible has been locked in a room with nothing but dubbed versions of Gérard Depardieu films.) As for evil names, try Franz von Schicklgruber.

I suspect any attempt to weigh in on the long-contentious topic of "dubs vs subs" may simply be trolling on Nate's part.

I will nonetheless allow myself to be drawn in.

Foreign films should always be watched in their original language. Especially if they are live-action. Put another way, actors should always be watched with their original voices accompanying the motion picture. Their voice goes with their face and body. Their emotion comes through. Dubbing ruins all this and is an insult to the original artists, serving only to help those who cannot spend even a whit of effort to read the barest subtitles.

I suppose for the "dubbed" crowd, all foreign characters, even in English films, should simply speak English with a foreign accent, even if this makes no sense for the plot.

Bad dubbing completely ruins films, good dubbing merely damages them. Subtitles only add a little load on the viewer AND can result in the viewer learning something new and starting to appreciate the language.

Only Americans and Germans routinely watch dubbed films (as far as I know). In other countries, dubbing films is reserved for youngsters who are unlikely to have gained the required reading speed (up to around age 10).

... youngsters who are unlikely to have gained the required reading speed (up to around age 10).

I have some sort of symbolic processing disorder, I suspect, and I'm forced to subvocalize everything I write or read. This makes trying to watch movies with subtitles frustrating in two distinct ways: (1) I read more slowly, so that quickly changing subtitles force me to rewind and pause the playback to avoid missing dialog, and (2) it's extremely difficult to process external spoken voices while I'm listening to my own internal voice reading... both seem to use the same "circuit". I was never successful at taking notes for this reason.

Movies should always be watched in the original language with subtitles. Unless it's a cheesy kung fu film, of course.

Why would I want to read a movie? Let alone one screeching something at me that I can't understand. I'd rather read a book.

You might accidentally pick up another language ... the horror. And I can know, it happened to me watching movies in English with Dutch subtitles and now I'm stuck with this new language. Truly horrible!

Movies should always be watched in the original language with subtitles. Unless it's a cheesy kung fu film, of course.

I beg to differ with you good sir. There are no "cheesy" kung fu films.

this is a long shot, but there was a kung fu film that i no longer know the name of.

let me try to narrow it down as best i can. group seeking revenge against another kung fu master and must go into hiding/training (check.) in this group of 5 or so each is skilled in a different martial art.

one of the group is trained in a martial art that requires gymnastics centered around tall poles raised in the ground like a trapeze artist.

day comes when the evil kung fu master finds the hidden training ground and the climatic fight is on.

unfortunately for the guy who spent his time training on the poles, the bad guy knocks them down thus countering his years of training.

I remember the first time I saw a subtitled film, when I was very young. (It was Fellini's Amarcord, if you're curious. My parents took me to see it.) I imagined the experience of trying to dart my eyes back and forth between the words and images would be incredibly difficult and keep me from following the story, so I settled in for what I expected would be over an hour of misery. Instead I got caught up in the story right away...and later, when I remembered scenes from the film, I remembered the lines in the actors' voices as if they'd been spoken in English! Honestly, it was like I'd participated in a magic spell or hypnosis or something. I couldn't get over how amazing that was, and I've loved subtitles and disdained dubbing ever since.

'Hot latex beds' is not as wacky as it might sound. I was in the market for a new mattress earlier this year and discovered that latex mattresses are in fact a thing, and that they do tend to absorb a lot of body heat and get very hot. I guess some people prefer the lack of springs. I ended up going for one with just a thin latex layer under the surface.Last year though, yeah, that would have looked pretty strange to me.

To answer the real question here, I'm guessing the reason why there are strange one-offs in the search parameters that bring people to Ars is because they read something in the forums and are trying to find it again. After all, for the longest time, the search function in the forums didn't really work that well.

Weirdest dubbed-movie shot ever: some American WOII movie where (in the original version) the Germans actually speak German. Of course, when Germans and Americans (may have been British) meet, they can't understand each other.

In the dubbed version, both sides speak German but they're still standing there pretending not to understand each other...

To answer the real question here, I'm guessing the reason why there are strange one-offs in the search parameters that bring people to Ars is because they read something in the forums and are trying to find it again. After all, for the longest time, the search function in the forums didn't really work that well.

They still don't. Ars needs to throw in some Boolean operators, like Google use to have.

Only Americans and Germans routinely watch dubbed films (as far as I know). In other countries, dubbing films is reserved for youngsters who are unlikely to have gained the required reading speed (up to around age 10).

True, although at least in Berlin, there are "english" cinemas, where they show films in the original english without subtitles. Popular with the native populations, not just ex-pats and tourists.

I saw the (new) Total Recall film in such a venue. No doubt some of the subtlelties of this work would have been lost were it to be dubbed.

So I just want to see if my understanding is clear, The 5th most searched term that brings people to Ars is "porn" with no other qualifiers? How far deep in the search results do you have to go for porn, to get to a link to Ars? Can anyone explain this in a way that would make sense to someone who has never operated a website or done any SEO?

Movies should always be watched in the original language with subtitles. Unless it's a cheesy kung fu film, of course.

Amélie can't be watched dubbed because no dub exists! That being said I think everyone is being a little snobby about english dubs. Miyazaki movies, Cowboy Bebop, Shin Chan are great dubs ... note I'm only listing animations cause I'd like to aviod starting a flame.